James Nicoll Reviews

No one knows where it came from. Or why, for that matter. Maybe the Stronghold has always been there. Silent. Foreboding. Expectant. Generations came and went. Wars raged. Kingdoms rose and fell. But the Stronghold stood and observed the history as it was written before it in blood, fire, and tears. Not a single soul has ever made it inside the Stronghold. But some sure tried…A parable of despotism and religious oppression, ​“Stronghold” was banned in its country of origin. It took Kesha Bakunin years to rewrite the book in English. With censorship on the rise in many parts of the world, it might be the last chance for him to share this cautionary tale about the most insidious kind of tyranny-one which is welcomed by its subjects as virtuous.The secret of the Stronghold awaits its claimant. The question is who will have the courage to peek inside. 

With the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of species comes the Grief: an unstoppable melancholia that ends in suicide. When Ruby’s friend, mourning the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, succumbs to the Grief, the letters she leaves behind reveal the hidden world of the resurrected dead. The Tasmanian tiger, brought back from extinction in an isolated facility, is only the first… but rebirth is not always biological, and it comes with a price. As a scientist, Ruby resists the Grief by focusing her research on resilient jellyfish, but she can’t avoid choosing which side she’s on. How can she fight against the dead and the forces behind them when doing so risks her home, her life, and the entire biosphere? 

Ki Khanga: The Sword and Soul Role Playing Game puts you in the role of a character of your liking in a world of mystery and magic; of villainy and victory; of sword… and soul.

Will you delve for lost artifacts in the ruins of ancient temples? Strap on beaded armor and an nkisi necklace to battle undead legions as they storm your city upon the backs of skeletal camels, or defend your village from a swarm of ravenous impundulu? Whether you’re making your way through the magical forests of Wandatu or fighting to survive in the palm oil-lit back alleys of Sati-Baa, you and your team will need all your wits, combat skill, and magic to make it through. But most of all, you’ll need each other.

This rulebook is the essential centerpiece of Ki Khanga: The Sword and Soul Role Playing Game, with rules for character creation, magic, arms, armor, divination and much more — everything you need to play Ki Khanga as either a player or Griot!

The next great adventure in fantasy roleplaying takes off here, and Ki Khanga: The Sword and Soul Role Playing Game is your ticket to a lifetime of adventure!

More modern tales of good ol’ MU! Each story shows a slice of college life at this storied and magical institution, steeped in the occult and part of the strange town of Arkham. Come visit this fascinating New England university — where science and magic, tradition and experimentation go hand in hand — and the quiet, secretive locals on which it relies.

Tales from Lynne Hardy, Tonya Liburd, S.L. Edwards, Richard Lee Byers, Jacqueline Bryk, David Kammerzelt, Dawn Vogel, Chuck Regan, Oliver Smith, Jennifer Brozek, Mary Berman, Jill Hand, Dani Atkinson, Matt Maxwell. Erica L. Satifka & Rob McMonigal, Matthew M. Bartlett

Includes the second part of ​“My Miskatonic,” which presents some of those strange people you might bump into on the streets of Arkham. 

Perfect for fans of Rick Yancey and Marie Lu, The Ones We’re Meant to Find is a sci-fi fantasy with mind-blowing twists, ready to burst onto the YA scene, from the critically-acclaimed Descendant of the Crane author, Joan He. Cee awoke on an abandoned island three years ago. With no idea of how she was marooned, she only has a rickety house, an old android, and a single memory: she has a sister, and Cee needs to find her.STEM prodigy Kasey wants escape from the science and home she once trusted. The Metropolis — Earth’s last unpolluted place — is meant to be sanctuary for those commited to planetary protection, but it’s populated by people willing to do anything for refuge, even lie. Now, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to use science to help humanity, even though it failed the people who mattered most.

Boneset & Feathers is a novel of witchy folk horror by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste, in which a young woman must re-ignite her magic against the threat of the dreaded witchfinders.You don’t know their fire is coming until it’s too late. That’s exactly the way the witchfinders like it. As an isolated enchantress, Odette knows this too well-she lost nearly her whole family to the last round of executions, barely escaping with her own life. All the magic she could conjure wasn’t enough to protect her mother and sister, a burden that leaves a despondent Odette practically wishing she’d burned with the rest.Now it’s five years later, and as the last witch left from her village, Odette has exiled herself to the nearby woods where she’s sworn off all magic, hoping instead for quiet and for safety. But no witch has ever been permitted a peaceful life.It starts with crows tumbling out of the clouds and spectral voices on the wind that won’t leave her alone. Then there are those midnight visits to the graveyard that she can’t quite remember in the morning and the strange children following her everywhere she goes. Odette wants to forget magic, but her magic doesn’t want to forget her. Meanwhile, the former friends she left behind in the village are cowering together, hiding from the ghostly birds they believe she’s sent to torment them for abandoning her. But that’s only the beginning of their problems, as Odette soon discovers their worst nightmare is about to come true-the witchfinders are returning. And this time, the decree is clear: to burn the witch that got away.With the men drawing nearer to the village, Odette must face the whispers from the dead and confront her fear of her own growing power if she wants any chance of stopping the army of witchfinders determined to rid the countryside of magic once and for all. 

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field 

Mad Max meets X‑Men in this razor-sharp new dystopian novella by the Philip K Dick award nominated author of Velocity Weapon.

It doesn’t matter what you call her. Riley. Burner. She forgot her name long ago. But if you steal from the supply lines crossing the wasteland, her face is the last one you’ll see. She is the force of nature that keeps the balance in the hot arid desert. Keep to yourself and she’ll leave you well enough alone. But it’s when you try to take more than you can chew that her employers notice and send her off to restore the balance. Then she gets the latest call. A supply truck knocked over too cleanly. Too precise. And the bodies scattering the wreckage weren’t killed by her normal prey of scavengers. These bodies are already rotting hours after the attack. Cowering in the corner of the wreckage is a young girl. A girl that shouldn’t be there. A girl with violently blue eyes. Just like hers. 

The world of tomorrow holds wonders unlike anything humanity has ever seen! But only for those lucky few. Alicia, a runaway New Woman, comes to small-town Wheeling, West Virginia, and gets entangled with Jess and Dale, throwing their lives of pointless work and drug-fueled virtual reality into chaos. Meanwhile, truths are uncovered of the nation’s rewritten history – truths powerful corporations would rather leave hidden. Rural cyberpunk of frustrated ambitions mixed with life-altering changes and cyber-mystery!

On the small space station Azura, Maxion Belmont is constantly torn between his two passions – engineering and music. Both are hobbies handed down from his father, who died two years ago. While his hydrodriver is great for repairing starship parts, his father’s old string instrument tugs at the latent grief Max hides from his mom and classmates with each chord he strums. When a foreign starship appears on the horizon, Azura welcomes its first tourist in years. But there’s something weird about Mr. Hames, the stranger-turned-substitute-teacher. He has no idea how to teach and keeps raving about the existence of alien creatures in the vacuum of space: star whales. As Max and the rest of Mr. Hames’s class-turned-starship-crew begin to uncover the mysteries of the star whales, they discover they aren’t the only ones looking for the elusive creatures – and not every whaler has good intentions. 

With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began one of the most varied and prolific careers in contemporary popular fiction. His work encompasses cyberpunk (Hardwired), military SF (The Dread Empire’s Fall series), humor (The Crown Jewels), even disaster fiction (The Rift). But much of Williams’s best work takes place in the shorter forms, as this generous volume, filled to overflowing with award-winning and award-nominated stories, clearly proves.

With one exception, The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author’s affection for — and mastery of — the novella form. That exception is ​“The Millennium Party,” a brief, brilliant account of a virtual anniversary celebration unlike any you have ever imagined. Elsewhere in the collection, Williams offers us one brilliantly sustained creation after another. The Nebula Award-winning ​“Daddy’s World” takes us into a young boy’s private universe, a world of seeming miracles that conceals a tragic secret. ​“Dinosaurs” is the far future account of the incredibly destructive relationship between the star-faring human race and the less evolved inhabitants of the planet Shar. 

“Diamonds from Tequila” is a lovingly crafted example of SF Noir in which a former child actor attempts a comeback that proves unexpectedly dangerous. ​“Surfacing” is a tale of alienation featuring a research scientist more at home with the foreign and unfamiliar than with the members of his own species. Finally, the magisterial ​“Wall, Stone, Craft” offers a brilliantly realized alternate take on a young Mary Godwin, future creator of Frankenstein, and her relationships with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, culminating in the creation of a monster who would ​“stalk through the hearts of all the world.” 

These stories, together with half a dozen equally substantial tales, are the clear product of a master craftsman with a seemingly limitless imagination. The Best of Walter Jon Williams is the capstone of a truly remarkable career. It’s the rare sort of book that the reader can return to again and again, finding new and unexpected pleasures every time out.